Wednesday I slept in and made breakfast for lunch. Scrambled egg, potato, and roll with strawberry jam. We all met in front of the NYU classrooms for a tour of the Jewish Quarter.
We broke up in to two groups, our group had a short lady with a thick accent, she spoke a lot and I learned quite a bit, but I felt there was too much standing and not enough walking around on the tour. We saw the "old new" synagogue, all the guys had to wear kippah to show respect while in the synagogues. Next we went to a synagogue that had been converted into a memorial with the walls covered in the names of all the Jews who died during WWII, it was intense. After that we walked through the old Jewish graveyard. It was sprawling. I tried to capture it with pictures but they couldn't achieve the depth of the place, so I grabbed some video. It was filled at one point so they covered it all with dirt in order to bury more people on top. There are hills and the gravestones are all falling apart and at odd angles. (In Jewish cemeteries the gravestone is put at the feet, not the head of the body). The cemetery hasn't been altered since the 1700s!
After that we went into a synagogue that had been turned into a museum; we saw a Torah scroll and the coolest thing was the spice boxes the Jewish families used. Finally we went to the Spanish Synagogue which was very ornate and amazing. Unfortunately I couldn't take pictures in most of the places, but I'll have the memories.
We broke up in to two groups, our group had a short lady with a thick accent, she spoke a lot and I learned quite a bit, but I felt there was too much standing and not enough walking around on the tour. We saw the "old new" synagogue, all the guys had to wear kippah to show respect while in the synagogues. Next we went to a synagogue that had been converted into a memorial with the walls covered in the names of all the Jews who died during WWII, it was intense. After that we walked through the old Jewish graveyard. It was sprawling. I tried to capture it with pictures but they couldn't achieve the depth of the place, so I grabbed some video. It was filled at one point so they covered it all with dirt in order to bury more people on top. There are hills and the gravestones are all falling apart and at odd angles. (In Jewish cemeteries the gravestone is put at the feet, not the head of the body). The cemetery hasn't been altered since the 1700s!
After that we went into a synagogue that had been turned into a museum; we saw a Torah scroll and the coolest thing was the spice boxes the Jewish families used. Finally we went to the Spanish Synagogue which was very ornate and amazing. Unfortunately I couldn't take pictures in most of the places, but I'll have the memories.
After that, one of the other teachers convinced me to go to the chamber music concert in the Chapel of Mirrors. It was 450 kcz, which is 22.5 USD, which is more than I wanted to spend on anything, but I decided it was kind of a once in a lifetime experience. The place was beautiful, there was a string quartet and an organ player, and they played Vivaldi's The Four Seasons along with Smetana, Mozart, Bach, and Dvorak. There was a lady who sat in front of us and she seemed bored out of her mind. She was looking at a map for a while, then other papers. She then took out a teddy bear that was dressed in like...a German beer garden classic serving girl outfit, and the lady was making it dance with the music. It was hilarious. After that we got ice cream, the flavor I got was "cookies", it was delicious.
Also, one of the other girls here is making up dances for everything, so we had our "going to a chamber music concert" dance, and our "going on the metro" and "leaving the metro" dances. We have decided to create a full-length interpretive dance show. Once we were all back and after chilling for a while, the dances-girl (Kelly) and my roommate (Ali) and myself were having girlish sleepover discussions and decided to draw on our door sign that has our names. I wrote "no boyz allowed" (the z was backward), and Ali drew all three of us, and we signed our names on the bottom. Hilarious.
Today we go to Karlstejn Castle, I'm hoping I can take pictures!
No comments:
Post a Comment